It's Never Quite What It Seems
by soulofanangel
Summary: "Maybe this is what they were always warned about. Or maybe they were just warned about life."


Smut? What's all this then? Nope, nothing to do with me, officer. I've heard nothing about nothing. All sweetness and light, that's me.

**Rating**: Um, I don't like being on the R-page, so it's R masquerading as PG-13. 

**Summary:** Duh, *SMUT*. Carby, far-too-verbose, smut to be more precise. Oh, and some angst thrown in for free – because I like to give value for money, and I'm incapable of writing non-angst. I should write for ER ;-)

**Author's Notes**: Part insomnia, part boredom, the rest is all Anna's fault, all of it. Well, possibly Kitty's originally for finding some weird NC-17 fics around the web, but only Anna actually wanted us all to write some smut of our own. So it's all her fault – if you hate it, flame her :-D

'Tis my first ever smut piece, so all comments, especially constructive criticism (not that I intend to make a habit of smut-writing, but you never know when it could come in useful) are welcomed with large toasts of champagne cocktails ;-)

With everlasting thanks to Anna for everything apart from making me write this, but especially for the bits of this she wrote for me.

~*~*~*~

**It's Never Quite What It Seems**

~*~

_I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong._

W. H. Auden 'Twelve Songs, IX'

~*~

There's a certain slant of light on a winter's afternoon through the blinds, which hits her across the face, turning her classical features into shifting patterns of white and black, merges of grey sliding across her beauty.

It's in here that they're hidden from the world, in here she keeps the tears and the laughter and everything in between close to her and concealed with FBI worthy security measures, and he can't see them as sharply as he'd like to, but he knows they're there, because he knows her. And she knows that and thinks that maybe her greatest wish right now was that he didn't know her. She wants to protect him from her and people like her. Prevent him cutting cut to shreds on the jagged shards of glass protruding from her mind.

They feel like the fated stars in some low-budget, but well-shot, early movie from the golden era of silence and monotone. 

It all used to be perfect, it all used to be wonderful. 

_"It's A Wonderful Life"_, indeed, but they actually believed it. Back then, they did. There was no need for a guardian angel to appear to either of them, no need for them to be forced to see how incredibly lucky they were.

They knew it.

Or they had known it.

Black and white is always simple, but it's the grey in between that kills you. 

It's got kind of lost now; it's probably in the same place as that heirloom engagement ring and their dreams of marriage; children, a white picket fence and a dog. If only they were provided with a map with a handy 'X marks the spot' guide to finding their way back.

But it's never really like that, is it.

You're always told it is through everything you read, everything you see, even if it is supposed to be a realistic story with a sad ending, but actors are always given lines to say, always directed carefully with what to do in those.

It's never like that.

You should be told that at some point in guidance-counselling in high school.

She thinks however, upon reflection, that there is some unseen director controlling them right now, pulling on invisible but binding strings, there must be, because she'd never let herself get into these situations, and she wishes she'd seen the script before the performance, at least had one rehearsal to see if this time she could get it right. Hopes whoever it is who is pulling her is getting some perverted joy out of this, because she sure isn't.

She turns from him, avoiding the emotions in his eyes and focuses on the cups of coffee on the side. Are they still warm enough to drink? She grasps her hands around one bone-china mug, feeling like she wants to squash the mug in on itself, force it to break into little scared pieces scattered over the floor. Watch destruction happen first hand, prove to herself that you can't ever slot all the delicate pieces back together as they should be so maybe you just shouldn't try.

Shocked by the violence of her unexpected feelings she lifts the mug to her lips and drinks the coffee, forces the gulp down her throat and swallows the unexpected grimace that rises to her face. It's cold, she hates cold coffee. Loathes it. But it's probably easier to drink this down and swallow the remainders in the cup than to turn and face him.

Story of her life, the easy way out. The one that hides from everybody, the one that runs and the one who's learnt long ago not to believe in true happiness. Because it's just a concept waiting to be ruined and broken irreparably like everything she touches always is.

He gazes at her lips. Despite all that's happened between them she still has the power to transfix him. Her face is only visible to him in quarter-view, but the hidden shadows of her absorb him more than they do even in profile or full-frontal. Each little flicker of light, each curve of her skin is perfection, is danger, is his life-breath.

He needs her as much as he ever did, even though he knows she destroys him.

At his touch on her arm, something in the room seems to shift. The atmosphere's still tense, but there's a thunderstorm on the horizon. An explosion to kill the air, to produce a new sense of calm. It promises intensity but she wishes it promised continuity. Or maybe she just thinks she does.

She can't seem to help but turn into him, her body facing his, her North Pole, almost pressing into him, trying to become one. Hell, he's only touched her arm and she's already working on autopilot. She wonders how he can think they can possibly forget the past six months.

Wonders how under his tingling fingertips she's considering it to be an option.

He's not too sure what he's doing, knows how destructive this is. Self-mutilation on his emotions and his heart. But he can't seem to help himself, can't seem to stop obsessing over her clouded face, her dark beauty, her tormented psyche. His right hand stays on her left arm; his left arm grabs her right shoulder as she turns towards him.

How do some people know what, where, when, why, who, how?

They don't.

He wonders if this will make the whole thing worse, but hopes and prays it won't, always the cynical optimist. She knows it will. Always the idealist and the pessimist. Beauty and the Beast in modern-day time. Cinderella re-told as well. Strange how 'Happy Ever After' doesn't seem possible even for fairy-tale lovers to achieve anymore.

Not that they're going to stop. That was never an option.

She knows she needs someone to fuck her, he knows he needs to make love to her.

Different drugs for blocking out reality, but they still need crutches to get through life even after all the programmes they've been through, meetings they've endured, stories they've heard.

Maybe this was what they were always warned about.

Or maybe they were just warned about life.

She forces herself to face up to him, to look into his eyes and see what is there. Passion, always, always passion. For her, for love, for life. She wishes she had it, and knows that it's what draws her to him – that unquenchable thirst for experiences that she's never had.

There's a shiver up and down her spine as his fingers move slowly, lightly, over her clothes, placing no pressure on her skin. Yet they're there. Rubbing and stroking over pale flesh and cotton; the feel of him quietly staking his claim on her. And in her lightest moments, she wants him too.

There's tears in her eyes, crystal clear waters swimming over the espresso of her irises.

One falls down her cheek, following the line of her delicate, porcelain cheekbone, and he kisses it from her face, tasting the salt. But beneath the bitter salty taste of the liquid, there's the smooth and soft taste of her skin. Something he thought he'd forgotten and would never again experience, something he now knows will be forever indelibly engraved on his soul. Much like she will always be, no matter what.

She's now so close to him he can feel her warm breath on his skin, feel the goosebumps from this closeness spread across his body, smell the stale nicotine and burnt coffee and chewing gum on her breath. 

Something in him needs to taste this, needs to prove that what he can feel and sense is her. Or needs to discover what 'her' is. Discover for the first time, discover all over again; he's not sure, but his movements are born out of necessity, not choice, and it's lying to pretend it's ever been any different where she's concerned. Because suddenly his lips are on hers, there's a sharp moment of pressure and blazing heat between them and he's sure he didn't move his head. Not really. Not knowingly.

Maybe he should go and have a long chat with a therapist about his sub-conscious. He's sure Freud or someone had a good explanation for unremembered, unconscious, actions of a sexual nature. If he could only remember what that was.

Or maybe she should.

For as soon as he's leapt backwards from her lips, dragging his mouth from hers, burnt by the heat of the emotions ignited between them, she moves her head forward, seems to demand his breath as the price of what he said earlier. And he submits because he still feels wrong about it. Knows what it's done to her, needs to try and make it all better. He thinks he can change it, though he can't because it's all wrong, always has been all wrong, and probably will always be all wrong.

And kissing each other to make them forget reality won't make it any better.

But she lies to herself that it might, that the hangover and the come-down tomorrow morning will hold pain of a different kind to now, and that it'll reduce her pain in now to more manageable proportions. It has to. She loses herself when she's with him, and she needs this, to be set back, to stop the pounding residing in her head. To feel what the brick walls and layers of iron won't allow her to feel when she's being Abby. So she pretends there's a limit on the amount and type of pain and heartbreak you can feel although there isn't and she knows that.

He wonders why she cares so much about words he said, sounds he formed with his mouth and throat. For it's always been the things they didn't, wouldn't, say which mattered most to them. Wishes that it could still be like that, but prays that the change might be better in some way. Because it can't be worse than now.

Not that right now is bad. It's the afterwards; the guilt, the love, the sadness and the quiet acceptance that consumes them in varied degrees. She's kissing him, drowning in him, forcing herself into him. This is why he loves her, this is why he cares.

And they both know she'll never be everything he wants, but she's everything he needs. And the difference between the two becomes less distinct with each kiss, each touch. He needs it all; the passion she buries beneath the weight of her darkness, the fire she tries to quench but can't manage and which rages when given a chance. The Furies inside which terrify her.

Though she's not terrified now. This feels right, like an old, often repeated, pattern of dance-steps which they know well and love. In it she finds comfort and familiarity, though she knows she shouldn't. And she's not quite sure 'comfort' is the right word to describe what's happening to her body chemistry at every glimmer of his touch.

Their tongues' actions are probably matching what their minds think of each other right now in some weird metaphor. Battling, wanting to hurt each other, but twisting round them, needing to be there, to touch them. Creating a fog that swims around them and blurs everything else. Everything except the heat roaring through their bodies and their tongues and their mouths and their screaming needs and their passions.

The nerve endings in her legs were burnt numb long ago, and she's not too sure how she's still standing. Except that his arms are tight around her, forcing her back into his stomach, gripping her shoulder with a death-claw. She can't collapse even if she wanted to. She feels like he's trying to suck her soul into him from her mouth. His kisses are hard and desperate and long; he gives everything into them, kisses like there's nothing else he can do to save himself. All she can do is try to compete with him, to force him to kiss harder as she presses him on.

He wishes kisses didn't mean so much, didn't have such emotions behind them. He understands now why prostitutes apparently won't kiss their customers on the mouths. Because that would mean they did feel for them. Sex would mean something as well, but not so deeply. Not so truly. Not so obviously to both of them.

Sex doesn't bare the soul or make you as helplessly vulnerable as a single kiss from her does. Though he knows that if he had to choose he'd choose her kiss every time, the sweet hint of roses in her lip balm, the way she sucks his bottom lip into her own mouth and chews on it, the way she can turn him on through such a simple movement and make it impossible for him to turn off.

He doesn't tell her this. She doesn't need any help reading him, she's good enough at it naturally.

Spirals, whirlpools, rushing rapids. She's falling into it, and he isn't. He won't let himself this time; he's standing on the banks and watching. That's why she hates him. More than anything. More even than she's ever hated her mother during her worst phases. Because her mother has never forced her to fall into the depths, just jumped herself. But he's just pushed her over. And he knows it.

Sucking, biting, breathing, murmuring, pressing, kissing, clutching, touching, rubbing, grasping, pulling, stroking.

Her throat is lily white, slender as a swan's and pale as snow in the half-light between the kitchen and living room. He loves her throat, finds it sensuous, erotic in so many ways, and knows she melts when he focuses on it. Vampire like. He kisses every milimetre of it, moving upwards slowly towards her hairline while she arches her neck, and feels his whispered breathes murmuring into her ear, though she can't distinguish the sounds and doesn't even bother to try.

They seem to be moving backwards, travelling across the living room; he's not sure how for all he can seem to do is worship her, kiss her, smother her and he's sure she's not leading them. He'd always thought it was anger and love that could cause this kind of consuming passion, like a food which they could live off. But it seems that hurt and sorrow and desperate grief have the same energy levels.

She's just letting him, standing there as passive as ever, like someone who's caught in a storm and has stopped caring how wet they get. Drifting in the strong current towards the bedroom, knowing what's happening, but powerless to stop it, and she just doesn't care any more, can't see the point in caring when it's all so screwed up anyway.

Though it's her hands of ice which are touching his skin, feeling the warmth his blood emits through the muscles of his back. So maybe she doesn't want to stop it, maybe she wants to start it, maybe she doesn't know or think anymore. Her fingers which are running through his hair, pulling at nerve endings. Her breaths which are murmuring encouragements and entreaties to his ear lobes, her lips which are sucking as for life-milk from him. 

All his hands can feel is the warmth she gives out, the cold smooth softness of her perfect skin, the silk which tries to protect her from times such as this. He wants to move this carefully, to treasure and protect every moment and memory. But she won't let him, needs a harder and faster and stronger fix and does everything she knows to get it. Rips off denim and wool as a plaster from a wound, hoping to reduce the pain if they do it faster. Touches the whole length of him with different pressures where he needs and wants them now.

And the cotton and linen of her bedclothes seem to produce an almost allergic reaction in him. He can't breathe or think, can't do anything apart from what comes naturally. His breath is shorter and shallower, preventing his lungs from working properly, but somehow heightening the blood rush everywhere else. Language could not capture this or play any part, so it does not seem to matter that he has it not.

She wants to go on top, she needs to have some control of this uncontrollable thing which is driving them both. Straddle him, grind against his hips, leave bruises so he can't pretend she was never there. To pretend to have some vestige of sense left. He knows how much she wants and needs that, but he won't let her. Can't let her go on top, has to make her stop needing control and independence so much, in the desperate hope that he will be able to make her need him instead. Though he never will be able to, for he's tried for eternity. So he forces her shoulders backwards, rolls her over so his hips press hers down through the mattress, sees the anger and desperation in her eyes as he does so.

Forces which he watches diminish, bewitched as ever by her eyes, and sees her throw to him the death of a smile before seeking out his mouth again as some nights she sought out Ben and Jerry's. She needs him to touch her here, there, somewhere, everywhere and nowhere. He hates that she closes her eyes now, wants to see and prove to himself that he can effect, but she refuses to let him.  So he's forced to guess by the changing patterns of movement beneath her breasts which he absorbs into himself, and the half-sounds she lets escape from her lips when apart from his and his skin.

She drags her mouth along the curve of his shoulder, alternating patterns of teeth and tongue. Forcing him to hear her in the only way she knows how, mapping every area of his body, focusing minutely on the marks which always cause him to stop functioning and wish to shrivel up and leave. Though this time he doesn't, he wants too badly to find her parallel marks which can do the same to her. So he feels her with every method he knows and others that he doesn't, and the fact that he controls her right now and she controls him means something must be controlling them.

And then there's nothing conscious, nothing either could determine or describe. They can't hear anything apart from the roaring in their ears, their sight's limited to the red mist swimming across the front of their brains. All they know is the building, rushing sensations throughout their bodies which refuse to allow them options other than to push and pull with breathless gasps at each other. To bump their hips and grind into each other, forcing a tangible unity they never quite had and always thought should be just within their grasp. Leaving bruises and grooves and other indelible marks.

Fireworks may be beautiful for a dispassionate onlooker, but they destroy the air they travel through for the sake of vivid colours.

~*~

He slips out of the bed silently, barely moving the covers. His clothes are scattered across the floors of her apartment, the wood is cold under his feet and he's worried about the floorboards creaking and her realising exactly what he's doing to her.

The pale light of dawn hits him straight in the eyes as he enters her bathroom, the softness of the early morning summer light much more dangerous than it pretends to be. There's a lot of things in life like that, he should really be used to it by now, but he always seems to fail to remind himself in his weaker moments when he most needs to.

As he re-enters the bedroom, to stare at her beauty one last time she's gazing at him. Furiously intently. She sees right through his eyes, and this connection which they can not seem to ever break terrifies them both. They've always wanted so desperately to lose themselves with someone else who's lost themselves, but eventually they've come to need reality. Something calm and dependable to balance the waves roaring in their heads.

Only neither wants to face it, or think about it, or make the first painful break. Neither believes they can without suffocating, and knows that to die might be easier and involve less blood and tears.

"Is this it?" she asks, her voice breaking, though he does not know whether that's sleep or sorrow. She knows which it is, but refuses to tell, refuses to let that vulnerability enter her countenance, one last defence between him and a breakdown which she will not let him crush.

His voice, normally so easy to read, is empty and raw.

"I think so."

~*~*~*~

**Author's Notes:** The title is the title of a song by the band 'Over The Rhine'. The starting line, "There's a certain slant of light" is nabbed from an Emily Dickinson poem which begins "There's a certain slant of light on winter afternoons…", unfortunately, I don't actually write original prose which sounds as good as that ;-)

'The Furies' are from Greek Mythology and are here used in entirely the wrong meaning.

The metaphor of someone standing still, as if in a storm who's stopped caring how wet they get is from the final episode of 'My So-Called Life' *sniffs*

Set in the middle of nowhere…anytime in seasons 7-9. Thus, it can be first-time sex / make-up sex after a row / break-up sex…whatever you want :-D 


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